Break (it) Down

The Prophet             by Kahlil Gibran

And a woman spoke, saying Tell us of Pain.

And he said:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over the fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen,

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseeen’

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

Mariposa 1994

Break (it) Down

I have been thinking about the tension of opposites.  Engaging with the world in a time of turmoil has flung me into the tension of opposites.  I am beginning to see how this experience, if not consciously broken down, leads to a breakdown.  The last time I experienced it I gave into the grief for a very long time.  This time I am stepping back from the world when needed, for self care and reflection.   Sometimes I have to get to the point of spinning my wheels (and flailing my arms) before I realize it is time to step back.  Painting has a great deal to do with stepping back, for my approach to creative work includes hours spent in meditation, gathering information, shifting and understanding.  The painting is only the tangible record of it.  Painting is the material world, the body of work.  The rest is spirit.  

Journey 1995

   

Love for the world creates a desire to enter the world.  That, and the realization that it is not possible to retreat from life.  It follows you and pulls you back.  The more “alone” you make yourself the more your senses adapt and hear the smallest heartbeat, the tiniest call.  You feel the pulse of the world as acutely as if you were standing in the center of it.  It has lead me to a very conscious decision to reconnect.  One could say I picked a fine time.  I know I am not the only one.  This love can be so easily transformed into grief with the day to day experience of witnessing the world we love.  My grief has turned into action, but that has thrown me into a world of activity that is also motivated by fear and anger.  The fear, grief and anger are all so related they end up on the same team.  My conditioned response is frustration, inarticulately communicated to friends and acquaintances… leading to more frustration, of course, and ultimately frustration with myself.   

Untitled 1995

Jung’s theory on the tension of opposites concludes if one stays in the discomfort of this tension a third thing arises.  A “quantum leap”  of thinking and being, ultimately of consciousness.  It cannot be predicted because it is new, born out of opposites.  Try to force it would be like trying to determine the personality and destiny of your unborn child.  Sometimes we have a “feeling” about these things, sometimes even visions.  But in these bodies, in this world, we still have to wait and see.  How can I remain with my love for the world and my grief without breaking in half.  It seems only with the qualities of joy and hope, which are not always my natural states.  For me joy and hope have to be worked at, earned through understanding.  It is not just an intellectual understanding, it is a whole body and spirit experience, my definition of faith.

Faith 1995

I go into the world and am pulled by the tensions.  I act and react, often in ways I regret, and then return to my inner world where I can quietly break it down.  This is a conscious act, brought about by the same conditions an emotional breakdown would be.  I am approaching it these days as “beating it [a breakdown] to the punch.”   Taken to the point of a breakdown, I am able to break down the opposites and see them more clearly.  In this understanding I find myself in a more open and honest state, where trust, not in a determinist future, but in the vast universe of the present, can grow.

Juggernaut 1995

I found these older paintings of mine to be surprisingly effective for illustrating the tension of opposites that I am so aware of today.  Something to revisit in my work this year....  Perhaps my paintings will see the third thing before my conscious mind can grasp it.

The Female Center

I sometimes hear voices.  I kept pretty quiet about that my entire life, because, well, I was afraid of being judged by minds that do not understand such things.  This has been a month of letting go of fears... so that one's gone too.

In the early morning hours I sometimes hear a voice, telling me one thing at a time, helping me understand. It's always been a fatherly voice, until yesterday.  Yesterday the voice was female. It told me to Enter. 

The words were "Put yourself inside of me."  (If you immediately thought about sex read the next paragraph.  If not, you can skip it.)

The sexuality of the phrase, while undeniable, could easily become a distraction from the larger lesson of the words.  Making female power centered on sex is a way of taking away female power, by limiting it to one dimension of human activity.  If we as a culture had a healthy relationship with feminine power, then the relationship between sexuality and all the other forces that drive us as humans would exist in harmony.

I reflected on the words I had heard, "Put yourself inside of me" until I finally decided to paint.

My first interpretation of the voice was that of the earth, the mother, the female.

Fire inside, fire in the center.  What to enter?  The Center.  It is in the entering that the understanding begins to unfold, through the feeling, through the energy, through the very act of entering.

We are at a time in history when we have so much to look back on and sift through.  Books and knowledge excite me, offering so many paths of thought and exploration for the mind.  But, in the end, I have to get out of my head for the clarity I need.  The clarity that is needed for peace comes from calling my ancestors and finding my center.  It comes from a place that cannot be defined with words.  

The knowing that comes from the mind and the knowing that comes from the heart's center do not need to be in competition.   Coexisting, they work together, for we are in the world, as well as the spirit, at this time.  This is the conflict I see around me, that of opposing poles.  How does one shift that magnetic push of opposition into an alignment?   By entering the center, where the forces no longer push or pull.  Rather than split the atom, enter it.

What my ancestors and spirit are telling me is to release fear.  This happens by facing fears, not suppressing them or pushing them away.  Looking at fear and then letting it go is the way through the anxiety of our time.  It leads to a centered calm.  Everything must change, in a profound and all encompassing way.  That change is happening, and in order to adjust to the change, a strong and centered female energy is needed.  And this is an energy that is misunderstood in a patriarchal world, where equality is often sought on male terms, and feminine power is still confined by those very terms. 

The imbalance has been focused on male, light, linear thought, hierarchy and force.  We are witnessing its final stages.   It cannot be tamed, let alone fought , with more of its own .  A receptive, dark, female energy encircles it and tames it, not with force but with unimaginable power.  This happens on every level of human activity, from the most intimate to the most public, through personal relationships to political struggles.  All we need to do is look to nature and spirit to bring our human world back into balance.  Starting with, but not stopping at, ourselves.

Female is reception.  It is Yin.  It is the stillness in the center of the storm.   It is the heat from the center of the earth.  

That is where I enter.  

Night Vision

In the earliest hours of morning our thoughts connect 

 two worlds.  Dreams open doors into a fluid world. In daylight the thick shell of the world hides from 

us from the truth we seek. 

We forget the stars are still there. 

This is my story of remembering.  It is one of many, for when we are not forgetting, we are remembering.  And each story tries to remember, but in the telling it falls short.  So the Storyteller is born again.

In the middle of November I was not sleeping well.  One particularly windy night I lay in bed, staring into the darkness and listening to the forest howl outside my window.  As I drifted between waking and sleeping a vision began to form, one I did not welcome.  I saw a darkness surround all beings, enveloping the earth.  It was thick, a cloud of deep thick charcoal fog.  I entered into it and saw with my heart its fullness.  Suffering.  So much suffering.  It was not just suffering to come, it was suffering that had been and it was suffering that is.  It was all existing in one place and one time.  I saw it with my entire being and I lay in bed weeping.

It was 3 in the morning and I was sobbing, trying not to wake Dale.  I lay there for an hour.  All beings, humans, animals, trees and the earth itself all wept with me.

Untitled Work in Progress

This was a pretty dark place, even for me.

After an hour I knew I had to get out of bed and go into the woods. I woke Dale.  He was concerned when he saw that I was crying. I told him. He said, “Take a flashlight.”

At first I didn’t turn on the flashlight.  I wasn’t in a hurry, so I thought I could just step slowly and carefully, letting my vision adjust to this very dark night.  It was a Wisconsin November.  So there were dry brittle leaves everywhere, and, on a windy night like this, they tend to pile up.  So, my first fright came when I stepped into a pile of leaves that wasn’t there the night before.  My foot lifted the leaves, taken up by the wind, farther than I would have imagined. I was surrounded by the sound of rustling leaves and my pounding heart.  In the blackness I stood frozen, hearing movement all around, and I decided I wasn’t so opposed to the flashlight after all.

The Wind

At that point it occurred to me that I would rather see a creature of the night before stepping into its space, so the light stayed on as I carefully made my way to a special spot in the forest of pines.  It is a place where a large tree has lain fallen for years, so much so that younger trees grow through it.  Animals take shelter in it.  Moss grows on it.  I have always loved this spot.  When I got there it took me awhile to find a comfortable seat.  The woods feel ominous at night. I chose to have my back against a young tree, something to lean on, and it gave me a small sense of protection. 

The wind was still blowing fitfully, shaking the trees and loosening their dead.  Before turing off my flashlight I scanned my perimeter for potential Widow Makers, or in this case Widower Makers.  Then, with a touch of my thumb, total darkness.

House of the Woods

Oh how hard it was to keep that light off.  A breaking branch a few feet from me was enough to make me freeze.  For what seemed like hours, but was more likely 30 minutes, I sat frozen.  My eyes were wide open, but, at first, I saw nothing.  Slowly I began to see.  There seemed to be a substance to the air, as if every single molecule was coming out of hiding.  The air, the trees, the leaves and I were all tiny dots vibrating in and out of my sight.  Looking up I saw a falling star.  In this light the trees are the negative space, and the distant stars are the positive space.  For a moment I was neither light nor dark, I was only perception, as everything around me changed from one to the other.

Molecules

For an hour at least my thoughts bounced back and forth between wonder and terror.  Of course I could calmly remind myself the biggest danger that night was a coyote.  But a noisy rustle in the black space around me made me imagine more.  Believe it or not, this was the first moment I recognized a connection between my choice to sit in the woods and the story of Siddhartha.  As the account of his becoming the Buddha is told, Siddhartha despaired at the suffering in the world.  His search for an answer led him to sit under a Bodhi tree, meditating outdoors for seven days and seven nights.  My 2 hours in the cold on a fallen tree paled in comparison to his 168 hours. I laughed at all the times I sat on a comfortable cushion in my heated home to meditate.  Nature is essential to awakening us to this life, and we humans so often hide from it.  In a terrible separation from the earth I had forgotten the lessons it has to teach me.  In my darkest moment, I remembered, and I stepped outside.  To be inside of our deepest consciousness we have to be outside in the Natural World, not inside of the Manmade World.  To the degree to which we the Modern Humans have violently torn ourselves from our connection to nature, we have suffered.

I swear I remember there being a moment in the story of enlightenment where a giant cat approaches Siddhartha.  So, I thought, maybe I needn’t be quite so fearful.  A lion or tiger would be bad. Back to fear. Forgetting.

Deep Sleeper - Intermediary

Of course the point wasn’t Lions and Tigers and Bears.  We do have occasional bears and wolves and even the rare cougar sighting in this part of the State. I knew there was a reason I was out there in the cold and it wasn’t to try to guess which wild beast would eat me for dinner.  I could fear the wind, the animals, even the possibility of a human in the woods, probably most dangerous of all.  I had to let it all go. The most frightening part of being alone in the darkness in the woods was also the most awakening.  Remembering. 

I began to look each fear squarely in its face and release it.  I soon found myself remembering them all, from paralyzing terrors to the less obvious ones. The ones that linger for days, muted and pale but persistent in their nagging.  People who had frightened me, I saw their fear.  People that had hurt me, I saw their pain.  People I had frightened and people I had hurt, I saw my blindness.  I saw fear and pain passed on from parent to child, from master to slave, from teacher to student.  Acts of violence replacing the wisdom of old with inherited pain and terror.  Victim becomes perpetrator and the lamb becomes the hungry beast at the door. There was no bad, no good, no dark, no light. Only attaching and letting go.  With each passing fear I felt an infinite lightness that cannot be expressed with words, although LOVE is a good one to try.  This was a special kind of night vision.  Seeing through the dark.    

Artic Spirits

It was at this point I realized the woods were becoming more and more visible in the earliest light of the day.  As I had passed through the darkest hour of the morning I had seen through at least some of my blindness.  As the trees became solid, once again I could connect each sound with its source.  I looked up at the sky.  Not a single star in my sight.  I would have to go on memory.  Remembering.  I got up, a little stiff, and walked toward the house.  I would put on some coffee and try to talk about this.  The things the darkness commands us to know. Fears are only passing moments, but we give them strength when we try to suppress them.  In their suppression they are squeezed and wiggled into our souls and the passing darkness takes a solid heavy form.  This heavy load is so light in its release.  Walking back to my warm house I knew I would struggle to find the words to tell this story. And in the telling they would fall short. And the storyteller is born again.  

Dreams and Visions - paintings in their raw states

I have made two decisions this month.

One is to leave paintings in their raw state.

The Other is to share all of my visions, even the ones I have been quiet about.

I don't turn on a lightbulb. I see in the darkness and find my way through it.

What i see in the dark, i can't see in the light. Not yet. Go deep, wake up. One day you will do both. 

We are in Kali time. I am Usha. My time is not here yet, but I am preparing for it.

In Kali time the darkness makes the others remember. We are not smaller than the one controlling the story. We control our story. We heal and are unafraid of the darkness.

The governments of the world call it post-colonial. We ARE living in a Neo-colonial world

My ancestors came to me in a dream. They were refugees from a war with no winners. 

They were seeking shelter in my cellar.

I asked the smaller man in front of the group, 

"How did you get in?"

he said,

"We always find a way in."

I was afraid I could not care for them and I left them.

They left me.  For many years they were hidden in darkness and unknown to me.

I promised to stop hiding from the darkness of the world, 

as I promised to not let my grief for the world blind me.

I promised to walk out into the darkness and face every fear.

They are coming back to me.

The Story... no beginning and no end

The story I am telling with the Sentient Beings has no beginning and no end.  

It started sometime... perhaps when I was sleeping.  

It will end sometime... in a future that doesn't exist yet.  

So, like I said, it has no beginning and no end.  Jump in whenever you like.

The Seer.  In his youth he is a runner and a reacher.

The Seer is a Visionary with a third eye in his forehead, which makes him embarrassed and confused.  After all he is not living in a mythical land of Eastern Gods, but rather South Dakota.  At least for now.  He is not sure how he got there and he is certain he doesn't belong.  He has visions, but he doesn't take the time to see them clearly, he just reaches for relief and runs away from his fears.  So... in his youth he is always running and reaching.  I guess you can say at least he's moving forward... but at this rate who knows where to?  He could really end up going in circles if he doesn't slow down.

The Seer, in her old Age.  A cloud covers her third eye.

The funny thing about Sentient Beings, they exist in different realms, times and forms all at once.  While the Young Seer is busy sprinting to who knows where, the Old Seer is unable to use her wings and fly, and she is unable to use that third eye, because it's covered with a cloud.  Her life was hard, and her vision was clouded by pain, loss and disappointment.  She stopped seeing the visions when she started to only see the hardship in her life.

Eagle Eye see through the layers of existence.  

Just when you started to lose hope... in comes Eagle Eye.  She is a shapeshifting spirit who comes and goes from our lonely Seer's life to reveal a deeper truth.  Hopefully to shed some vision on the visionary so he can start using that extra eyeball and not become a hopeless old lady.  Eagle Eye flies above all the realms and sees through the many layers of existence.  Most of use see one, or maybe two layers, but Eagle Eye has seen so many he has lost count.  For awhile she thought there were 13, but she's realized it just keeps going and going and going....

What has Eagle Eye learned that can help poor Seer?  At the moment that's a mystery, because although Eagle Eye can see, he can't speak.  So... I guess they will all have to find another way to communicate.

Stay tuned... some more characters are on the way to help explain all this.  Infinity and Tree are not far behind.

This is the Place

My painting from 2000/2001 is now hanging at Lost Moth Gallery in Egg Harbor

This is the place where the land and water meet.  This is the place where the waves crash against your feet.  This is the place where shore greets sea.  This is the place where you become me.  
This is the place of diamonds and pearls.  This is where boys become girls.  Anything is possible, every dream is true.  This is the place where I become you.
This is the place of forest and sky.  You’re ready to live when you’re ready to die.  Love in between if you’re ready to cry.
This is where all weapons go to rust.  The place where anger turns to trust.  This is where night becomes your friend.  This is where your dream began.
If ever you are cast out with your fears.  Look them squarely with thy soul and it will bring you here.  Do not try to fight the waves of change.  Hang on tightly for your life and do not be afraid.
For this is the place where flight is made with broken wings.  This is the place where the mute swan sings.  This is how the question when becomes the question why.  This is where me becomes i.

In Life As In Art

In Life As in Art: Lessons from the Studio

William Blake

"Behemoth and Leviathan"

c. 1805 - 1810 

I love the paintings of William Blake.  I don't share his religious sensibilities, but when I look closely at them I share something beyond the literal interpretations, into the vision.

Many people will marvel at his work but dismiss his genius as fueled by insanity.

Sometimes I wonder if the greatest insanity is the compliant acceptance of the culture we live in and the restrictions it imposes on our vision.

Look at a Blake painting for a very long time.  The next time you look at a flower, look for a very long time.  Look at another person's face for a very long time.  

Apply the same thing to your thoughts.  The next time you are contemplating an issue, look at it from all angles, look at your emotions as they form themselves around your thoughts and move them from side to side, shifting their very essence into something new... more tangible perhaps.  Or more accessible, more palatable, more digestible.  We blind ourselves to the truth of our own existence and shrink ourselves to fit into a world that needs to keep us small and obedient.  And it is safer to stay small than to expand into a space we are unfamiliar with.

   "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."

                                                                                              William Blake  "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

Work in Progress from the Studio  (This one is mine)

There is a lot of insanity around us in this culture we live in.  And so little time to contemplate.  The Buddha told his followers not to believe what he said, but rather to go out and find the truth for themselves.

We find by searching, we see by looking, not for what we already know, but for what we haven't known yet.  And that takes a lot of time, an excruciatingly long look without turning away.  

Old thoughts need to be released in order for new thoughts to arise, and when we hold onto our beliefs and opinions we don't see what is before us.

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.

                                                                                                   William Blake "A Memorable Fancy"

In life as in art, the experience is entirely up to us.  It just depends on how long you are willing to look and how wide you are willing to see.  The possibilites are infinite.  

Healing and Art: The Truth Will Set You Free

"The Way Home"          Finished Painting

Sometimes life is stranger than fiction.  Life certainly gets interesting when you are truthful with yourself.   Somewhere, deep inside our subconscious, where no one else can give you directions, where no teacher dictates right from wrong, where no dogma, definitions and simple answers can exist, there we can find the truth.

I began a strange and very interesting journey this month when I decided to write about my painting, "The Escape" in a post titled "Victim no More, Silent no More." (03/10)  Circumstances beyond my control compelled me to write about my own experience of domestic abuse and the therapeutic way it appeared in my art, revealing to me my suppressed emotions and memories.  Writing about the painting, I exposed myself to public scrutiny with my own issues, many of which have been subjects of pain, shame and fear.  I could not have foreseen the encouragement and insight that would bless my life as a result of the simple act of telling my story.

A close up from "The Escape"    There is a struggle and conflict in my heart and my mind, as I give away my power.

In the original painting, I appear in several forms.  One of these is a dog.  I allowed myself to be treated like one.  This is how it feels when you have lived through an abusive relationship.  And so many of us stay, like a dog that returns to an owner who beats it.  It is a dehumanizing experience, and looking at it as a part of my own personal history filled me with shame.  I think of myself as a strong woman.  Because I had memories of allowing myself to be treated in this way, there has been a fundamental disconnect in my own definition of self.  It lead to a certain lack of honesty in everything I did.  It split my self image into two parts, the one I cognized and the one I suppressed.  In the original painting I am the dog, but I am also a bird fighting the dog.  The figure who represents my abuser has his fingers in my head.  The suppressed self image remains in this passive dog-state without power and without a real form.  It is skeletal.

In reworking the painting the fingers get pushed out of the dog's brain and the dog and bird metamorphose into a new creature.  This new image of self is not perfect, but whole and united, with yet to be realized powers.

When I approached this part of the painting and saw what I was denying to myself, I started to remember parts of my life I had pushed aside and buried for so long.  Some were horrific acts of physical and sexual violence.  Others were moments of shame, when I supported my abuser and his actions with my silence.  When I met him I was 20 years old, and I was a naive and idealistic young woman who was in a state of constant rebellion from the world I was raised in.  I grew up with privilege, but I knew the world was unjust and was unable to accept it.  I spend so much of my teenage years battling my father and anyone who considered themselves a realist.  In my mind accepting the world as it is, unequal and unfair, was nothing short of treason to a higher sense of justice.  My youthful idealism met many obstacles head on, and an undeniable one was the injustice of my own middle class childhood in a world where many have so little.  My childhood starkly contrasted the world of poverty and violence my abuser came from.  His pain pulled at my guilt as much as his violence transformed my innocence.  That was the initial dynamic.  He showered me with praise and adoration, while reminding me of my shame: my birthplace in an unjust world.  When his behavior shifted from "sweeping me off my feet" into violence, rage and blame, I was left mute and paralyzed, like the dog on its back in my painting.  I was dependent on his affection as the only redemption for my guilt.  If I left him I only proved him right, life was easy for me and hard for him.  I did just that and I never found a way to address that fundamental conflict in my mind and heart.  How quickly and easily I went from rebellious teen to submissive victim, never leaving either completely healed.  It has been a truth of myself I refused to admit.  It has been the suppressed spilt.  I couldn't bear to see myself with that kind of unflinching honesty.

Facing my fears means facing shame, regret, and things I haven't wanted to believe about yourself.
It has made it possible to transform.  The transformation helps me feel courageous, powerful and honest.
I am becoming a person my idealistic teen self would have looked up to.

Since I started writing about this experience I have received vicious backlash from my abuser, I have been able to finally get a temporary restraining order signed and served, I have found inner strengths I didn't know I was missing, and I have been reminded, over and over, that I am not alone.  I have been added to a directory of healing artists, been highlighted in the local paper's e-newsletter and been asked for permission to share my stories with social workers and their clients.  I have sometimes stayed home, too tired and confused to face the world.  I have established healthy boundaries in all areas of my life.  My paintings have reached a deeper and more dynamic level, acknowledging the dualities of dark and light without judgement.  I have found a voice within me I didn't know could be so raw and honest.   I am moving beyond the classifications of abuser and abused.  We are all victims until we heal our own internal divides.  Only then can we understand healing in the world outside of us. 

I have never mentioned the name of my abuser and I never plan to on this blog or any public forum.  And yet he has revealed himself.  I was unable to get papers served by the police, but he showed up to confront me and was surprised by a Sheriff with papers.  The ironic and fateful way my story keeps unfolding as I do nothing but tell it with candor has given me a new faith in justice and fairness.  I do not accept injustice, but I am waking up to the realization of the divide, that creates it.  I can live without hidden shame and suppressed pain.  I can be my best, and that is what we owe to life, and to the world.

Everyone has a gift. Nurture It.

"The Escape" is now "The Way Home"

This painting is still in progress, but I felt the urge to write a short but hopefully sweet post reflecting on where I'm at in the process.

 Since posting the post "Victim no More" I have been asked if I need therapy, a guru, hypnosis… I appreciate the concern actually, all caring questions from caring friends.  But it seems to me what I need to do is just to continue painting.  When I'm painting the questions present themselves, the memories arise, the emotions resurface.  And a visual language I have spent over 30 years developing helps me to see these memories, feel the emotions and begin to process answers to questions I have until now been too afraid to ask.  It feels like a miracle.  It is certainly a gift.  I am incredibly grateful.

If you have a gift, all I can say is this: continue to exercise and develop it, even if you feel short on time and energy.  Just a little when you have time is better than nothing.  Some years I only had a few weeks out of the entire year to wholeheartedly attend to painting.  I'm so glad I did.  Nuture your gift, let it be important.  The unique way your gift will reveal its meaning and purpose in your own life will someday be clear.  Have faith.

The Healing Power of Art: To Look Without Turning Away

Painting in Progress.  The Escape is becoming a new painting.  I'm still not sure  of the new title.

I posted my last post ten days ago.  It began with the phrase "Victim no More,"  and when I wrote it I knew that would happen, but I didn't know how.  As I move along, I have learned if I try very hard to be honest with myself, my actions will continue to lead me in a direction that helps me to be the best I can be.  It is a destination that is far from the attainment of perfection; it may never lead to material success, and it will not make everyone like me.  What I do believe is that unflinching honesty to oneself is the only reliable guide in a fluid, ever-changing approach to life without a roadmap.

Sounds simple, but it's been the most challenging approach to life that I have found.  And it is the most rewarding,  if what you're striving for is to feel fully alive and present in your own life.

Anyone who read my previous post knows I recently opened up and told my own personal story.  As a survivor of a very violent and traumatic relationship in my early 20's I have struggled to regain my strength and power throughout my adult life.  Painting has been a vital tool that has helped me to understand my subconscious thoughts and suppressed feelings, and communicate them first to myself and finally, to my family, friends, acquaintances and even strangers.

There have been consequences to telling my story.  There was immediate retaliation from my abuser, in the form of comments.  I have been feeling exposed, both emotionally and physically.  Many of my fears have surfaced, not only in my painting, but in my life.

Facing my fears one by one and looking at them  long enough to understand them completely.

In the center of the painting I have discovered my fears, as each one unfolds.  I have been afraid of being physically harmed.  Being verbally attacked in such a public way by my abuser was not something I predicted, but it has always been a threat and a fear.  I was afraid I would be seen as a weak person for having even been in an abusive relationship.  (I was afraid I would be judged in so many ways.)    I was afraid of remembering what I have pushed aside.  I was afraid of so many regrets.   I felt ashamed, scared and anxious, but I wrote down my story and I posted it publicly.  And the fallout has been huge; for ten days every single one of those fears has sat down in front of me and beckoned to be seen. 

As I painted the visual manifestations of my fears I felt each one acutely.  I tried to see them through to their worst case scenario.   It was exhausting, but they are losing their power over me.  I am seeing the strength in vulnerability, the courage in taking chances and the power in honesty.  I have begun to realize that certainty is an illusion sought out by fear.  I have also learned that fear cannot be escaped by running or hiding.  As I paint, I literally FACE MY FEARS.  And they become known to me, and I regain power over each one.

      In order fully own our own lives we must fully participate.  To do this well we must
have boundaries, and our boundaries are our own to define and defend.

Boundaries have always been an issue for me.  I would venture to guess anyone who has been in a relationship where they were physically violated has boundary issues.  But just as challenging for me are emotional and psychological boundaries.  In the past few years I have begun to realize and assert boundaries, often with very little grace and a lot of clumsiness.  It's a learning period.  I intellectually understood my abuser had no right to contact me, by phone, email or Facebook comments.  But in order to emotionally understand that truth I had to feel my own boundaries.  This took time.  When I began to publicly tell my story I took a quantum leap in boundary setting and my balance was very shaky at first.

Fortunately for me I have had a few really strong foundations in place.  I have a solid relationship with a supportive partner who understands me.  I have friends who cheer me on, even if we have moved to different places and rarely see each other.  I have family members who support my choices with respect and love.  And I feel more and more safe.  Safety is never guaranteed,  but I am secure in my preparation and planning for what I consider "worst case scenarios."  If I felt isolated, alone or ill prepared, I would not have told my story.  Speaking out can, at times, be dangerous.  Each person must decide carefully.  It is not realistic to think it is always the right thing to do, but when the time is right, it is a choice that can give victims ownership of their lives.  That is what it has done for me.

Returning to my own life I weep tears for the times I have been emotionally absent.
There is a bittersweet blend of sadness and hope in seeing your life with clarity. 

Although I am learning that my boundaries can enable me to be vulnerable in many areas of my life, up until now I used the creative process to feel things fully and give those feelings and experiences form.  This has been my lifeline.  It is one of the most valuable things I have to offer from my life.  I know how to tap into emotions I have vaulted up and left in darkness, experience them in the present and give them symbolic form with line, colors and shapes.  A lifetime of thinking through pictures is now making so much sense.  It has led me to where I am, and I am excited to continue discovering what there is to be known in this life, through the visions in my paintings.